Southwest Riverside County residents pray for John Paul

JAMES CURRAN - Staff Writer

Fernando Solorio needed to take a break from work Friday
morning.

The director of pastoral care at St. Martha's Catholic Parish
said he had heard a report from an Italian news agency that Pope
John Paul II had died. Solorio had seen the pope five times. News
of his declining health moved Solorio.

"I think it has impacted me," he said later. "The first thing I
did, I had to go and pray. I was blessed to have seen him."

The report of the pope's death was quickly denied by the Vatican
and later recanted, although they acknowledged he was close to
death. That didn't stop Solorio and thousands of faithful in
Southwest County, who focused their attention to St. Peter's Square
at the Vatican. Some were in prayer and others conversed about what
was expected to be the imminent death of John Paul II.

Ruben and Patti Moreno of Temecula were somber as they left St.
Catherine of Alexandria Catholic Church in the early evening. They
had gone specifically to pray for John Paul, Patti said.

"I feel sadness for the passing of a very religious, God-serving
person," she said.

"He's the holiest person on Earth and we're going to lose him
soon," Ruben added. "If it's God's will to take him, he's going to
be missed."

Solorio and the Morenos are among more than 1 million Catholics
in the Diocese of San Bernardino, which also oversees Catholic
churches in Riverside County. The Rev. Howard Lincoln, spokesman
for the diocese, asked for people to pray for the pope's
comfort.

"I would recommend that we stay in watchful prayer," he said,
"and give thanks to the incredible witness he has been during his
papacy."

Outside the region, Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of
Los Angeles was preparing to be summoned to the Vatican, where he
and the College of Cardinals will gather to elect a new pope should
John Paul die.

John Paul is the only head of the Catholic Church to have
visited Southern California during his papacy. He visited Los
Angeles twice, once as Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla, archbishop of
Krakow, Poland, in August 1976. His second visit as pope, 11 years
later, included a Mass that filled both Dodger Stadium and the Los
Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Solorio said he went to the Dodger Stadium service and has seen
the pope a total of five times. He said he also saw John Paul
during a meeting for the youth of Los Angeles, which made a special
impression.

"What caught my attention then is that he … had a specific love
of young people," Solorio said.

Residents hadn't gathered Friday morning at St. Francis of Rome
Catholic Church in Wildomar, but facilities manager Joe Franco, 58,
held the door open for someone wanting to pray for the pontiff.

"He was a remarkable man," Franco said. "He is an example of
love, faith and how we should be charitable with the gifts God has
given us."

Despite differences with the current structure of the church, a
representative with Call to Action —— a group of reform-minded
Catholics, praised John Paul.

"I always felt that he, as a person, was very noble and a very
spiritual person," said Eva Quinn of Carlsbad. "He had a lot of
good qualities."

Where Quinn diverged with Franco, however, was in regard to the
pontiff staying at the head of the church as his health
deteriorated. The pope, once a vibrant world traveler, lost much of
his physical abilities due to a years-long battle with Parkinson's
disease.

"I regret that he stayed on, being impacted by that for so
long," Quinn said.

During his final months, press reports quoted people who
suggested the pope step down so that the church could be run by
someone with all his faculties.

"I think it's an incentive for us to learn about his life,"
Franco said. "The suffering in his later years was a blessing in
that it shows us how to deal with it, not to be upset with the Lord
for what has happened."